


Learning to Fly

by QuinFirefrorefiddle



Series: Anchor & Balloon [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Childhood Sweethearts, F/M, Female Jewish Character, Fluff, Flying, Jewish Character, Omega Darcy Lewis, Witch Darcy Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 19:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17371808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuinFirefrorefiddle/pseuds/QuinFirefrorefiddle
Summary: Darcy Lewis, Muggleborn Gryffindor first year Omega, meets her first Slytherin, learns to fly, and translates Muggle to Wizarding. She can't wait until her mom will let her start drinking coffee, and apparently, wizards have radios? Why did no one tell her this? She's been here for weeks! It's 1985, how can she be expected to survive without music!





	Learning to Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Won't make much sense unless you've read Seventeen Years, the first installment of the Anchor & Balloon series.

It was Thursday afternoon, and Darcy was sitting through her last DADA class of the week. The professor had started to settle down and seem more sure of herself recently. The second week had been much better than the first, now that she wasn't jumping at every loud noise or second guessing herself whenever she answered - or tried to answer - a question.

Still no sign of a practical lesson in sight, of course, they hadn't even practiced an incantation, or so much as taken out their wands yet. Instead they were learning to distinguish between the various types of Dark creatures that were most likely to be found in the British Isles or Western Europe. A Hufflepuff Alpha had asked about the lack of wand use during the previous class period, and had received the response that there wasn't much point in learning how to fend off a particular creature, unless you already knew which creature you were fending off. Especially since the methods to disperse some of them were quite similar to methods to _attract_ others.

Darcy supposed that was sensible enough, and when she'd asked about American creatures the professor has been able to suggest a couple books available in the (unrestricted) section of the library right off, which was excellent. But it didn't make for an exciting class. Better than History of Magic, to be sure, but what wasn't?

It was especially difficult to sit through another lecture today when she and the rest of the Gryffindors would be having their first flying lesson during the next class period. The Hufflepuffs wouldn't have theirs until tomorrow, with the Ravenclaws, so they were calm and collected. But the Gryffindors were, by turns, terrified (the Muggleborns), nervous (those who'd had magical childhoods but hadn't been allowed child brooms), or desperately attempting to appear bored and above it all and failing miserably (those who had had child brooms).

Darcy was certainly willing to admit, at least to herself, that she was plenty terrified. She'd seen the Quidditch pitch and had an idea now of just how high brooms went in the normal course of things, let alone if you had to go higher than usual for some reason. She didn't really have a fear of heights - she'd never had trouble with ladders, or windows in tall buildings, or the monkey bars or anything. But all those things seemed a lot sturdier than a simple broom, even if it was magic. 

She had talked about flying with Charlie, who obviously loved it. He told her about the freedom and the exhilaration, and that sounded great. But it also sounded to her like you had to have more than a basic level of competence to get that far, which he agreed to. But (and this he said with a great deal of gravity that Darcy had recently realized meant that he was parroting his mother's lectures on Being A Good Alpha without realizing it) as long as a person was basically competent on a broom, they'd be fine in the wizarding world, and since _everyone was different_ , that was fine. Even if they couldn't fly, that was just a little inconvenient. But flying lessons lasted the whole year for a reason, and almost everybody figured it out by then.

He was working so hard to convince her it wouldn't bother him if she hated flying. She just wasn't quite sure he had convinced himself yet. Besides, Match or no Match, her ability to fly a broom wasn't actually about _him_ , right? 

She had asked him for pointers and maybe a quick try on a broom before her first lesson with Madam Hooch. Apparently though, anyone even in the general vicinity of a first year, any first year, so much as _touching_ a broom before their first lesson with Madam Hooch, was assigned a massive and legendary swathe of detentions. It was one of the few rules at Hogwarts that absolutely no one wanted to break.

As far as pointers went, his made sense. Stay as calm as you can, don't go too high, don't be afraid to land and then try again once you're steady. And never accept a dare from a Slytherin.

Darcy had barely met any Slytherins so far - they had stayed firmly in their own side of the room during her first, and so far only, Potions class. The incident with Rosier certainly didn't count. But the House rivalry was well known and obvious.

Darcy kept telling herself she wasn't going to be one of the people who never learned how to fly properly. She'd learned to ride a bike, after all. That took balance and coordination. Basically learning to fly a broom was the wizarding version of learning how to drive a car, except they started earlier. Now that she lived in Britain and went to a magic school, it wasn't certain she'd ever learn to drive, but she had never worried she wouldn't be _able_ to learn when the time came. Cars were probably far more dangerous than brooms. And being magical meant your body could survive more severe injury. She almost certainly wasn't going to die.

Oh _Merlin_ , she might _die_ today!

She gave herself a little shake. She could keep her cool. She was more rational than this. Her biology didn't control her.

She glanced at the clock. She hadn't missed too much class time with her internal freak-out, but she had no idea which Dark creature the professor was talking about now. Oh well, Nicola and Liam would help her fill out her notes later.

*

Madam Hooch met them at the entrance to the Training Grounds, clearly not at all phased that the Gryffindors had shown up _en masse_. Darcy would have been more surprised that she already knew each student's name and background, at least as far as familiarity with flying went, but she'd noticed Madam Hooch's sharp eyes scanning them from the Head Table during meals several times, and her quiet conversations there with her colleagues. It was the second week of classes after all, and if _Darcy_ was going to teach flying to mixed groups of 11 year olds, she would have insisted on getting information in advance too.

There were about twenty brooms arranged in a neat semicircle on the grass, each with several feet between it and its neighbor. About half the Slytherins had arrived already and had been spaced out among the brooms by Madam Hooch, none next to each other. She quickly dispersed the Gryffindors among them, keeping a consistent pattern of alternating the Houses. As far as Darcy could tell, she was also putting each Muggleborn next to at least one student with some flying experience, since while she hadn't really met the Slytherins yet, she had certainly gotten rundowns on most of them from Nicola, who already had a contact or two in every House.

Darcy was at one end of the semicircle, with the left-most broom. Next to her was a tall Slytherin girl with red hair a few shades darker than Charlie's. On second glance, it wasn't so much that she was tall (well, not so very tall, nearly everyone was at least a little taller than Darcy), as that she had the kind of posture Darcy's mother always tried to instill in her - so upright as to be positively queenly. She didn't have her nose in the air, but her chin was perfectly parallel to the ground. While Madam Hooch arranged the last of the Slytherins trickling in, Darcy introduced herself. “Hi, I'm Darcy Lewis. I hope you've done this before, I haven't.”

“Fiona MacPherson.” She paused, and seemed to size Darcy up. “Flying's easy enough, once you get the knack of it. Unless you have a fear of heights, in which case that is something you'll have to break yourself of.” Her Scottish accent was just a bit stronger than Professor McGonagall's. Darcy was desperately trying to think of a question to ask that wouldn't make her sound like a stupid American, or a clueless Muggleborn, when Madam Hooch called the class to order.

“Rule one of this class is that you never do _anything_ before you are specifically instructed to. Last year we had two broken legs and a fractured collarbone in the first six lessons, plus an assortment of lesser injuries, and all were from someone getting ahead of themselves. So this year, let's be clear from the start. I will explain what to do, and then answer questions, and only then will I instruct you to actually _do_ whatever it is. _Are we clear?_ ”

The chorus of the students: “Yes, Madam Hooch;” was a trifle wary, if not quite impressed. This was Hogwarts, and Darcy was getting used to the idea that most, if not all, of the professors could freeze blood with a glance.

Or at least with the wave of a wand. Literally.

After what seemed like a great deal further instruction squashed into a very few minutes, they were finally allowed to try to raise their brooms. They were to put a hand out over the broom and say, “Up!,” with all the authority they could muster.

Darcy's first few attempts had rather feeble results; the broom seemed to twitch a few times, and that was all. Fiona, of course, with her regal bearing, got the broom to smack up into her palm on the first try. Darcy saw Nicola and Liam were not quite as successful, but after a few tries their brooms were rising.

All right, so Fiona had the trick of it. Darcy closed her eyes and imagined herself as the most authoritative person she could. Years of experience and wisdom. Opinion sought in the midst dire situations. Unphased by the most terrifying of emergencies. She saw a face clearly in her mind, brought all of that personality into herself as she could, and said, “Up!”

The broom smacked up into her hand almost hard enough to hurt, and Darcy opened her eyes in astonishment. Nicola and Liam were looking at her approvingly, and even Fiona looked faintly impressed.

Darcy decided she was _never_ telling Professor McGonagall about this.

*

After all that, her first time actually getting _onto_ the broom was a little prosaic. She pushed off as gently as she could, rose a couple feet into the air, promptly got a funny feeling in her stomach, remembered Charlie's advice, and pointed the broom firmly at the ground.

She did not fall off. She maybe got a little closer to falling off than she would have _liked_. But she didn't fall off. And that was what she would tell Charlie later.

She spent a few minutes watching her classmates, practicing raising her broom a few more times as she did so. Eventually she reached the point where she just had to think _about_ Professor McGonagall, rather than pretend to _be_ her. Progress, at least.

By the time she'd settled enough to try getting on the broom again, Madam Hooch was announcing that was enough for the first session and to put down their brooms, and congratulated them on getting through their first class without injury. She further said that if anyone wanted to practice flying outside of class time, they would need to do so with at least one second year or above student, who had already fully passed flying, for every two first year students.

As the class broke up, Fiona caught her attention. “Yes, Fiona?”

“Darcy, I was wondering if I could ask you a favor?” Fiona glanced around, and took a step closer. “You know we can take specialty classes when we get older? My parents are really encouraging me to take Muggle Studies - the world is changing, it is the eighties - and I was hoping to get a jump of on things early. But there's only one Muggleborn Slytherin in first year, and he isn't talking - can't wait to escape the Muggle world, I take it. Would you be willing to talk about it? A bit? Just so I can get an idea what I'll be in for with the class, and not make myself look a fool?” 

Gone was the regal queen who had been there before, this was just a confused eleven year old. Fiona looked _violently uncomfortable_ with the idea of having to ask for help, but Darcy didn't think it was the subject matter - Fiona's attitude didn't seem to indicate a feeling of Pureblood superiority or anything. She seemed to just be one of those people who _hated_ asking for help. And Darcy could understand not wanting to look a fool - her memory of those first few seconds, having woken up on Charlie's chest before they Matched, were clear as a bell.

“All right,” Darcy replied, slowly. “I could do that. And maybe you could help me with something.” Fiona raised an eyebrow. “Seeing as how I'm new to all this. Could you tell me about Slytherin House? Only all I've got to go on so far are Gryffindor opinions, and I'm not sure those are… um, fair.”

Fiona straightened to her full height - the queen was back. “Of course. Very wise of you to ask. I’d be happy to.”

They agreed on a time to meet. By then the rest of the class was gone, and Madam Hooch looked like she was about to ask them to help clear away the brooms. So they left quickly, and separated with a nod in the corridor.

*

The first meeting of the Jewish student group was that afternoon. Travel plans for Yom Kippur, coming up in two weeks, were discussed at length, followed by a vibrant debate over whether using the Floo Network counted as work. No agreement was reached, but as the travel plans had been organized to avoid the no-work hours, it didn't really matter. The two Orthodox students would be the first to leave and the last to return, anyway. An older student in the group had discovered there was a wizarding family living a few blocks away from Darcy's parents who were on the Floo Network, and happy to let her use their fire. They were Buddhist, not Jewish, but understood about the difficulties of handling non-Christian holidays in the UK quite well.

After supper, Darcy and her classmates met to finish as much homework as they could. Free Friday afternoons were a magic they knew they'd only enjoy their first year, so they planned to make the most of it. Since Potions was only once a week, they hadn't had any trouble putting the homework off a bit, and were hoping to enjoy as many truly free weekends as they could, before the real workload, and fear of exams, set in.

So it wasn't until that night, in the pack nest, that Darcy finally got to tell Charlie about her day. As they settled together, Darcy spared a thought of thankfulness for the enormous amount of warmth Charlie always radiated, he was by far the best hot-water bottle she'd ever had.

The flying lesson came first of course. Charlie was delighted it had gone so well and frankly surprised no one had been injured - the fractured collar bone Madam Hooch had mentioned apparently had been one of his year's fellow Alphas. 

They exchanged theories about the DADA professor. She did teach practical lessons after all, as she had the second years doing defensive magic drills, wards and shield spells and so on. Charlie was rather surprised at how easy he was finding them, as several classmates were struggling.

Finally she told him about the group meeting before supper. Neither of them were looking forward to the separation for a night. In theory, Charlie could come with her, even though it wasn't his religious holiday - Matched couples could _choose_ to separate themselves overnight, but no one else would dare _separate_ them, it was far too taboo. He had offered to come. But as Darcy had explained, this was not the introduction for him that she would choose, to either Judaism (and then she had to explain that word, the magical world was _terrible_ on education about world religions), or to her parents. A Day of Repentance was not the best way to start on either. Especially with the length and emotional weight of the synagogue services.

Instead, she'd go alone. She had told him a bit about Hanukkah. (“Most of our holidays are basically, ‘they tried to kill us, we're still here, let's eat!,’ and Hanukkah is _really great_ for that.”) Charlie seemed to be genuinely looking forward to the student group's celebrations for it, which he had been invited to by both Darcy and Ruth. (Who Darcy had recruited, to make sure he knew he was truly welcome.)

They had also planned to go to her home for the beginning of the winter holidays, and then travel to his family on the 28th for New Year's. (By train rather than Floo, at Mr. Weasley's insistence - he wanted to hear what Charlie thought about every moment of it!) He was enthusiastically looking forward to Chinese food and a movie on Christmas Day. As he put it, he loved his family, but there were a lot of them crammed into the house, and he didn't mind she was an only child in the least.

But still that night apart, just two weeks away, bothered her. She had never slept so well as she had since they Matched, and knew it was true for him as well. Poor sleep certainly wouldn't help her day’s fast, either. (This year was a trial run, as she would have her bat mitzvah ceremony next year, and she hadn't made it through the day without at least a few sips of water, yet. Maybe she'd make it this year!)

“Sweetheart,” Charlie said, and oooh, she didn't think she'd ever stop getting a shiver when he called her that, “it'll have to happen sometime. My parents were Matched before they Bonded, and they didn't enjoy being separated, but they've always said it turned out to be a little easier than they expected. Besides, I expect I'll fall asleep just like I always do.”

Darcy pushed herself up on an elbow to get a better look at him, and tried that eyebrow thing Fiona had done to her earlier. It didn't really work, but he seemed to get the idea. “Oh really, Weasley?”

Charlie grinned. “Thinking of you, of course.”

She melted. She didn't really want to encourage him, but she melted anyway. Now that he'd finally started to relax and sound like himself around her, this was happening more often. (He'd also stopped parroting his mum quite as much - Mrs. Weasley was doing a magnificent job raising him, but Darcy had Matched _Charlie_ , and not his mum.) It was so frustrating. Wonderful, sure. But frustrating. Still, she folded her elbow down again.

Still, she was curious. “Charlie? Did it get harder for them? After they Bonded, I mean?”

Charlie thought before he answered, and she noticed a slight flush to his neck. After a moment she realized - that was the first time either of them had mentioned the Bond out loud. She felt her own flush rising, and buried her nose in his shoulder, taking a deep breath, to calm it.

“Actually, they said it got easier. Once you have the - the Bond, the connection it gives you helps you feel like you're never truly separated, Dad said.” They were both quiet for a bit, imagining what that could be like.

Charlie told a funny story he'd heard at lunch about Professor Snape and a Niffler, next. Darcy would have been more worried about keeping a straight face in Potions the next day after hearing it, if she hadn't been so sleepy. They both drifted off to sleep, not long after, safe and secure.

*

Darcy was always a little fuzzy in the mornings, even now that she Matched with Charlie and was sleeping so well. Her mom wouldn't let her start drinking coffee yet, though it smelled _divine_ , something about not stunting her growth. How her growth could get any _more_ stunted, Darcy didn't know.

She had considered trying it anyway, now she was at boarding school, but lying to her mom was always a losing proposition. Her mom was a Beta, sure, but she'd never needed smell to tell when Darcy was lying. On reflection, maybe her magical talent came from that side of the family.

So the next morning at breakfast, when Nicola grabbed Darcy's arm during her third sip of precious-though-not-strong-enough caffeine, it took Darcy a moment to notice. She considered protesting, but that seemed likely to end in spilled tea, and wasting what little precious caffeine she had. Nicola was rarely pushy, but even in just two weeks of knowing her, Darcy knew that when she got that way, it was easier to just wait, and she would explain.

She was still a little surprised when Nicola pulled her all the way over to the Ravenclaw table, though. Nicola pointed her at a positively waifish Omega (Darcy was short, fine, but this girl was going to float away on a breath of air if she wasn't careful), and said, “Translate!”

The other Omega wasn't even looking at them. She was reading what appeared to be an Astronomy textbook, though not the one Darcy had, and was taking notes. There was no sign whatsoever that she realized other people were using this time to, you know, _eat_.

Darcy glanced between the two of them. “Nicola, I don't know what gifts witches might often have, but I'm not telepathic.”

Nicola huffed. “She has an idea. She's saying it's a brilliant idea, only I don't know what it is, because every time she tries to explain it, it comes over all _Muggle_ , and I haven't the faintest idea what she's on about.”

“Oh!” This was not actually the first time Darcy had been asked to translate from Muggle to Wizarding. Though she'd usually had more caffeine first. She looked forlornly at her nearly empty tea cup.

“Oh for _Merlin's_ sake,” Nicola exclaimed. She pushed Darcy down to sit at the Ravenclaw table - few people present cared or indeed noticed, most of the Ravenclaws were reading, like this Omega Nicola wanted her to talk to - and filled her cup from the nearest teapot. She moved the sugar bowl towards Darcy and stood back to wait.

Darcy very carefully did not smile. Nicola was not that difficult to point towards the basic direction of manners, if you went about it right. She dropped two sugars in her tea, and introduced herself to the Ravenclaw across from her. “Morning. Darcy Lewis, Gryffindor first year Omega. Muggleborn.”

The Ravenclaw glanced up, and Darcy was surprised to see she was quite pretty, or would be with more rest and some feeding up. “Jane Foster. Ravenclaw second year. Also Omega Muggleborn.” She tilted her head. “Have we met?”

Darcy thought about it. She'd seen a lot of new faces recently. Then she remembered. “You were at the Jewish student meeting.” She was amazed Jane had remembered her face, she hadn't thought the girl had once looked up from the book she'd been reading.

Jane acknowledged her with a hum, and was clearly about to go back to her book when Nicola cleared her throat. Jane startled slightly. “Oh, right.”

Darcy smiled. She'd gotten halfway through her second cup of tea already, and Jane was clearly adorable, so her mood had perked up. “Nicola said you had an idea.”

“Yes, well, it's about this ridiculous inability of electricity to work on a large scale in Wizarding areas. It's completely _stupid_ to be able to have, say, a radio, but not electric lights.”

Darcy twitched. Wizards had _radios_? She hadn't heard a note of music in _weeks,_ but radios were around somewhere? She glanced at Nicola while Jane continued to talk, something about pathways of energy and the polarity of the neutron flow? She'd ask Nicola about radios later.

“So the magical energy, which is incredibly chaotic, by all accounts, interferes with the electric power whenever an electric item is bigger than say, a bread box, or the electric power’s pull is stronger than a certain amount, which is why you can have a radio but not a hair dryer. Not that wizards have studied this in any proper _scientific_ fashion.” Jane huffed, and Darcy smiled into her tea. “But if you could direct the magical energy like we can electric power, with a cord or wire…”

Darcy twitched again. “Oh! Then we could keep them separate so they wouldn't conflict. But you could still do magic.”

Jane nodded emphatically, but Nicola was still frowning. Darcy turned to her. “It's like roads. Electricity can travel down certain kinds of cords or wires like vehicles traveling down a road. But the magical energy interferes with that, like….” 

She glanced back at Jane, who tilted her head. “Like fog?”

Darcy smiled. “Exactly! Like a really thick fog, making it harder for the electric ‘vehicles’ to keep traveling. But if we could gather the magical energy into its _own_ roads-”

Nicola continued the thought. “Then magic and electricity could travel side by side, no interference at all.” She bit her tongue for a moment. “That _is_ brilliant,” she admitted.

“We'd need lots of equipment for the tests though,” Jane mused, “and a place to do the testing. And the professors would have to let us do it.” She frowned. Darcy privately agreed. This did not sound like the kind of thing they'd let first and second years do.

But Nicola was smiling. “This sounds like a job for a Slytherin. We need Tony Stark.”


End file.
